Anyone having network/browser issues since 13.4? Second+-long pause on opening new web pages

[doobydoooby]

Hi, since updating to 13.4 I've experienced a noticeable lag on opening new web pages; they take a second or more to load whereas before, they were instantaneous. It's common across different browsers, I've tried safari, brave and firefox and they are all acting the same. I have little snitch installed and I saw problems with the 13.4 beta, but it seems to be the same problem whether I toggle the network filter on or off. Internet is still at full speed, so eg if I do a test on speedtest it still shows a massively high speed.... but it will take five seconds to open the webpage fully and then another ten before it begins to test the speed. My ping test is around 7ms, so that seems okay. But something is clearly causing the web browsers to cough. Even doing a google search might take 4 or 5 seconds before the page fully loads; macrumors takes about 5 seconds to fully load. Any suggestions how I might diagnose what's going wrong?

 

[Bigwaff]

You can install or enable the “developer tools” which will give you some metrics and possibly insight to what is taking time to load or display.

https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/use-the-developer-tools-in-the-develop-menu-sfri20948/mac

 

[mi7chy]

Try turning off Apple Private Relay.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-icloud-private-relay-mchlecadabe0/mac

 

[webbga]

Try turning off Apple Private Relay.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-icloud-private-relay-mchlecadabe0/mac

This was my issue when I transitioned from late 2015 27" mac to the new Mac Studio. My already poor Internet slowed to a crawl. It was this suggestion by someone on mac Rumors that fixed it.

 

[Feek]

I get this from time to time, it's as though DNS is taking a while to respond. I don't have Private Relay enabled.

 

[doobydoooby]

Thanks: unfortunately, it's not a private relay issue because it's consistent across different browsers.

 

[svenmany]

Perhaps try dumping the dns cache. Many sites suggest

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

to do that. I don't really know if it does anything since I'm unable to see that status of that cache.

dscacheutil -cachedump

just reports the error "Unable to get details from the cache node". Still, it might be worth the shot.

 

[doobydoooby]

Fascinating, that has distinctly sped things up. Thank you!

Perhaps try dumping the dns cache. Many sites suggest to do that. I don't really know if it does anything since I'm unable to see that status of that cache. sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

 

[svenmany]

Fascinating, that has distinctly sped things up. Thank you!

Thanks for that feedback. It's good to know that the command is still effective. I wish I could see the status of the cache.

 

[doobydoooby]

Hi, I just wanted to update on this. I found the culprit. I have Norton virus scanner running, and it comes with a firewall which I had turned off because I use LittleSnitch; Norton "fixes" itself by turning the firewall back on, even though I have expressly turned it off. There's no way to shift the default "feature" of this rubbish piece of software so that it just accepts to be off permanently. It conflicted with little snitch, so i ended up with a two-second delay to everything internet related. Annoyingly there's no way to uninstall Nortons firewall or to permanently turn the damn thing off without it fixing itself or telling me the virus scanner isn't working, so I just have to live with it until the subscription runs out. Grrrrrrrrrr.